


like real people do

by gothfriend



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Relationships, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/M, Frottage, Jealousy, Masturbation, Minor Barry Bluejeans/Lup, Necrophilia, Not Canon Compliant, Not Really Character Death, Sibling Incest, Twincest, look the entire fic is just lup dies and taako fucks her dead body. that's it., wholesome sibling corpsefucking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:33:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26531446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gothfriend/pseuds/gothfriend
Summary: "I had a thought, dear, however scary, about that night, the bugs and the dirt;Why were you weeping, what did you bury before those hands pulled me from the earth?"When Barry and Lup perform their lich ritual, something goes wrong, and Taako doesn't know how to handle it. He makes some bad decisions.I cannot stress enough how much you need to read the tags.
Relationships: Lup/Taako (The Adventure Zone)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 22





	like real people do

**Author's Note:**

> i ignored the stages of decomposition because:  
> 1) i am not into necro to begin with, so i especially did not want to deal with maggots  
> 2) they're elves and there's magic, so fuck you.
> 
> if you're here looking for intense gory necro, this isn't your fic. just some sweet wholesome sibling corpsefucking!
> 
> thanks again to goblin for betaing all my grossfic, i love you <3

Taako was scared shitless.

He wasn’t going to tell Lup that. He had no idea if she knew or not. They both knew each other better than they knew themselves, but she hadn’t been very… attentive, lately.

Which he got. End of the world, new husband, becoming an immortal being of pure energy and almost-uncontrollable power. All that shit. Still, he had no idea if she’d been paying attention to his subtle emotional cues lately.

Fuck, he didn’t even remember half of what happened the previous night, after he’d brought out the Grey Goose. (Which he was rapidly regretting. The sun was bright enough out on this hill that his head was throbbing.)

But on the off-chance that she hadn’t noticed, he wasn’t about to tell her right then, not two minutes before the deed was done, standing under a gigantic pillar of carved whalebone and watching her beam brilliantly at her husband while she clasped his hands in her own.

“You ready?” she asked, pulling her hand up to trace Barry’s cheekbone lightly. “You sure you’re gonna be able to keep it together, once you turn?”

Barry grinned right back at her. “Yeah. I got this.”

Watching them embrace, Taako felt his gut twist. He knew they were probably just as scared as he was, deep down. But shit, man, couldn’t they at least act like it?

Taako was starting to feel dizzy. He sat down in the grass and fixed his attention on running his hands through the blades gently, feeling the paper-thin slices across the pads of his fingers. He took a couple deep breaths.

Seconds later, Taako, watched as Lup and Barry’s bodies fell slowly into the grass, bolts of red electricity peeling off of them, scorching the ground below; he fisted his hands in the grass, knuckles digging into the dirt, focusing on his breathing. _In. Out. In. Out._

Huge, formless, chaotic masses of energy gathered over their bodies, and gods, they looked out of control. He could feel the heat roiling off them from yards away. Taako dug his fingers further into the dirt. A sharp stone dug into his palm; he just pressed his hands further in. _In. Out._

The air was crackling and sizzling. Taako knew he should be prepared to run. He was not.

He could make out a shape forming in the air above Barry. Something vague, spectral, but humanoid.

Just as he started to take an easier, deeper breath, there was a _sound_ _._

It was loud, louder than anything Taako had ever heard; it stabbed through his sore skull like a fucking ice pick and rang in his teeth, and it came with a flash of light that had Taako flinching, his eyes shut tight.

His palms were not leaving the goddamn dirt.

The aftershock of the noise slowly faded; all Taako could hear was a faint ringing. The hills were unnaturally still. He couldn’t even hear any birds.

He slowly opened his eyes. Everything was blurry. The sun took another relentless stab at his cranium. He squinted into the bright sunlight anyway; he had more important things to worry about than optical health.

Forms swam into view. The towering whalebone. A red-robed figure standing in front of it, swaying slightly. Barry, he realized.

A red crumple lying on the ground.

Lup. Lying on the ground.

Taako tried to scramble to his feet, only to be hit with a surge of nausea and fall over in a graceless heap, pulling dirt and grass up with him as his hands dislodged from the ground. He made a disgusting, choked noise. His breath didn’t seem to be working right at the moment.

“I don’t know,” Barry said, answering the question Taako couldn’t get out. The human was kneeling by Lup’s still form at that point; Taako wasn't really sure when he'd moved.

Taako surged to his feet, stumbling towards Barry and Lup; the ground pitched and rolled beneath him and he stumbled, gasping for air. His stomach wrang itself like a wet rag; his ears rang emptily; his chest felt like it crumbled under pressure.

“I don’t know,” Barry repeated, holding Lup’s wrist with one hand. “There’s no pulse. She’s not in here. I don’t--”

Taako fell to his knees beside his sister’s body, shoving Barry aside carelessly. He reached a hand out to touch her face.

The rock was still embedded in his bleeding palm, he noticed, with a dull sort of detachment.

“I don’t know,” Barry said.

* * *

The next few days passed in a blur of repeated explanations, all the conversations Taako was there for blending into each other til he could barely remember who he was talking to. Barry always handled the details.

“Yes, I’m a lich now. She lost control. No, we don’t know where she is. I don’t know if it’s permanent. I don’t know if she’ll come back this cycle.”

And that implication that floated just below the surface of every conversation; that even if Lup came back to her body at the end of this cycle, she might not be… all there. She might not be… safe.

That even after this cycle was over, she might never be safe again.

Barry made the decision to bury her body.

“But if she could come back to her body--” Magnus started, very reasonably in Taako’s opinion.

“No,” Barry snapped. Magnus flinched at his sharpness; Barry took a breath and closed his eyes for a second before speaking again. “If she comes back… wrong… well, we don’t want that to happen.”

Magnus’s lips were pressed into a thin white line. Taako’s muddled, exhausted brain managed to scrape two synapses together in a wildly impressive feat, and he tiredly slung an arm around the burly man’s waist.

“Come on, buddy. We shouldn’t be here for this shit. I’ve got another bottle of Goose in my room.”

* * *

Magnus, Taako decided, was the worst goddamn person on the entire ship to sleep with. His snores rang throughout the dark, cluttered bedroom, echoing in Taako’s pounding head with a vengeance. Not to mention he took up the entire goddamn bed when he passed out, leaving Taako to sit on the floor against the wall, his head resting limply on the corner of the mattress.

And he fucking soaked Taako’s sheets in tears. The entire top half of the bed was damp. Taako would have to do laundry the next day.

He was never drinking with Magnus again.

Laundry day was imminent, anyway. Taako’s clothes were piled haphazardly around the room, towering in unstable mountains on the floor, strewn across his desk and vanity. Piles of books broke the visual monotony at some points, most of them stuffed with makeshift bookmarks in the form of various pens, jewelry, and scarves. Magnus had knocked over an uncorked perfume bottle Taako had left on his vanity earlier, soaking one of the elf’s favorite blouses in the process, which he’d just left to sit in a lavender-scented pile on the vanity, too tired to deal with that shit.

Taako’s gaze traveled over to the mostly-empty alcohol bottle beside him. He reached out one hand to grab the bottle; they’d left the cap off in their haste to get as fucked up as physically possible. He scooped a shotglass off the floor with his other hand and clumsily poured himself the last shot, only getting his hands _slightly_ damp in the process.

Taako threw the last shot back, relishing the dull burn in his throat. Wasting no time, he stumbled to his feet, dropping the bottle and the glass in one go. _Shit._ The shotglass broke.

Whatever. He’d take care of that tomorrow. With the laundry. And the books. And the perfume bottle. And...

In a haze, Taako stumbled out of the bedroom, down the halls, right out of the front doors, barely paying attention to where he was going. The night air hit his face in a cool rush; he took a huge breath, turning his face to the clear sky. The stars swam and danced in front of him. For a second, Taako’s gut untwisted, and he stood stock-still, his face tilted upwards, watching the stars lurch their way through the spinning blue-black. His mouth twisted into a wry smirk; there were so many more stars here than there were back at home, and Taako rather enjoyed that he could see the entire meadow by their light.

Well. They wouldn’t shine for much longer.

Taako pulled his gaze away, tried not to think about the stars going out one-by-one, like he’d seen them do dozens of times, in dozens of worlds. That wasn’t relevant. They had another year. He didn’t have to think about watching them blink out. He didn’t have to think about the worlds lost with every plane they went to…

He resolutely fixed his view on the pillar of bone in the distance. Step by step, he dragged his feet sluggishly through the dewy grass towards it.

It took a long time. Probably felt longer than it actually was. But he got there.

He got there.

Taako stared at the carvings on the whalebone. At the grass at his feet. At anything but the pile of dirt beside it. The two shovels left beside it.

The half-filled-in hole beside it.

Gods, they didn’t even finish filling her grave in. Probably underestimated the amount of time it took to dig a grave; got tired halfway through, said they’d finish it in the morning. Probably they just didn’t want to deal with it. They didn’t want to keep _fucking dealing_ with _Lup’s death._

Well, bully for them, huh? Taako was her fucking brother, her fucking _twin_ , he didn’t get the leisure to just fucking deal with it in the morning. He didn’t get to stop thinking about it. He didn’t get to think oh, she’ll come back next cycle, she’ll stabilize her lich form, she’ll be alright in the end. He had to sit there, for days, knowing that the worst could happen. That there was a chance, however small, he’d never see the Lup he knew again.

Fuck, he’d been with her for _two hundred fucking years,_ he was hurting more than any of them, but nobody would think to check in with goofy old Taako, would they? No, they all went to _Barry,_ they trusted _Barry,_ they cared about _Barry’s_ feelings; Barry, her husband, Barry, who wore his goddamn heart on his sleeve. Unlike Taako, the stoic jokester. The pragmatist. The guy who always picked himself up and moved on, no matter what happened…

Taako dragged himself to the rim of the hole, kicked a shovel into it. The tool thumped dully as it hit the dirt.

It was only a few feet down. Before he knew what he was doing, Taako had half-stepped-half-stumbled into the grave, banging his knees and the heels of his hands into the dirt along the way. Standing up again was a whole other process that involved extensive maneuvering of the shovel as a cane, but Taako was nothing if not persistent.

The first shovelful of dirt was surprisingly easy to lift over his head and out of the grave. The second was less easy. His vodka-addled head lost count after that; all he felt was the burning in his shoulders, the roiling in his guts. He heard the wind whistling over the grave; felt it brush his head and shoulders every so often. When he felt the dirt shifting under his feet, he realized he’d forgotten to put shoes on before he walked out, and then he felt stupid for not realizing until then. Whatever. He had a job to do.

What job it was, Taako wasn’t sure. He just knew he had to do _something._ Something in him was screaming for—

was that a hand?

Tossing the shovel aside, Taako dropped back to his hands and knees, sinking his fingers delightedly into the dirt again. Loose crumbs fell through his grasp; his clumsy pawing through the earth finally revealed, yeah, a pale hand, blueish-gray in the moonlight.

Taako laced his fingers through hers without a second thought.

More pawing and digging covered Taako in dirt himself, embedded it under his fingernails, dragged his long gold locks through the soil and tangled them til he snarled in frustration, but it revealed more and more of Lup’s body. Her arm. Her torso. He carefully excavated the curves of her hips, the sweep of her thighs, lovingly brushed earth from her neck and face, combed it out of her hair.

Her eyes were closed. If she stank, Taako’s dulled senses couldn’t pick up on it. It was cliché, but Taako could almost imagine she was sleeping.

“Lup,” he mumbled, propping himself up over her on the palms of his hands. He leaned down and clumsily pressed a kiss to her forehead.

Her skin was cool.

Taako choked back a guttural, animalistic noise. His arms collapsed, sending him sprawling loosely on top of Lup’s body, his face careening into the crook of her neck and he kept it there, mumbling incoherently and instinctively pressing kiss after kiss to the hollow of her throat.

His chest ached, swelled, his nails clawed into the dirt by her shoulders uselessly. The cut on his right palm stung. He groaned.

Kisses turned into bites, teeth desperately gnashing at her throat, just enough to bruise—she was _his._ His sister. His heart. She had to be there, she had to _feel him_. He had to make her feel him. His body pressed against hers with a pressure that was rapidly turning frantic.

“Lup,” he choked out again, against her throat, and his brain assaulted him with ten different memories of her breath catching in her chest. His hands ground harder into the earth.

The press of his body against hers was turning into light friction that sent a jolt through Taako’s body when he moved. His throat felt tight. His stomach felt hot and small and pent-up, a deep ache inside of him that he couldn’t. Fucking. Stop.

Taako’s hips ground against Lup’s, almost against his will. Almost.

He could stop. He didn’t want to.

He picked his head up from her neck. Forced himself to stare at her still, blank face. Her eyes were closed. Taako didn’t know if that made him feel worse or better.

With effort, as if it took all his strength, Taako pulled his right hand from the earth, awkwardly stroked her cheek. His palm stung as he slid it across her skin. He didn’t care. His fingers traveled along her jaw, danced lightly along the expanse of her neck, along the purple blooming over blue-gray skin from his teeth, slid under her cloak to brush her bare shoulder. Taako’s hips rutted against her crotch, a knee pressing her legs apart, his cock aching harshly, throbbing in time with his head.

His throat closed. He vaguely heard himself making noises, dark, horrible ones that didn’t sound anything like a fucking person. His eyes burned.

Dammit if he was going to cry in front of her. His brain registered, somewhere in the very back, the fact that the thought made absolutely no goddamn sense, she was _dead_ for fuck’s sake, and for that matter, _Taako, why the hell are you making out with a corpse?_

But he was drunk. Taako was drunk, and that explained everything. Excused it, even.

(No, it didn’t.)

(But it was _Lup_ , it was Lulu, it was the other half of his goddamn heart, and she was so still, so stiff, so cold. Images kept flashing through his head of her, warm and soft and alive, giggling underneath him, winding her fingers through his hair, peppering his cheeks with quick kisses.)

(And he wanted it.)

In a few quick, cumbersome movements, Taako pushed himself up, yanked her cloak aside and pulled up her shirt, struggling with her stiff limbs. The tangle of fabric and appendages was all he could focus on for a good while; but he needed to touch her. _Her._ Lup. Her skin.

Right before the sobs burst from his throat, he dropped his head onto her bare breasts. He needed—he _needed—_

Taako sobbed into Lup’s chest, not slowing his frantic thrusting, his aching right hand cupping one breast as if she could feel it. As if she was bucking and moaning under him, squealing with delight when his thumb passed over her hard nipple.

He ached, and he ached, and he _ached_ and it was fucking excruciating. His pants felt damp against his throbbing cock; fuck, he’d never felt like he needed something so much in his entire goddamn life. Her skin was slick against his face from his tears and sweat mingling.

“You’re so--” he mumbled, and then he stopped. How could he finish that? What fucking words could possibly describe what Lup was to him?

She was more than everything.

Two hundred fucking years.

Taako struggled to his knees. Scrabbled at the front of his pants for a moment; finally gave up and yanked them down. The cool night air hit his cock in a rush; he felt like he was on fucking fire.

His hand curled around his cock, his thumb brushed over the tip, smeared precum. “Gods forgive me,” he mumbled, and then he couldn’t fucking _think_ anymore, all he could do was need and want and ache and _need—_

Taako dropped his head down, found Lup’s lips with his own. He kissed her stiff, cold mouth over and over again as his hand worked, fervently pressing and nibbling and hearing her naughty giggles ring in his head over and over again as the fire swept over his body, over and over again, until finally the crest was there and there wasn’t any going back, he had to keep going, he had to—“Lulu, Lulu—“

He came awkwardly, his cock pressed against his sister’s stomach, lips mumbling incoherently against her own, and he finally went still.

“Fuck,” he mumbled. He was limp against her, both of them covered in dirt and fluids. Every inch of his hair was tangled; the cut on his palm stung with sweat. He felt very, very cold all of a sudden.

Still, he reverentially pressed another kiss to her still lips. They didn’t move. Of course they didn’t move; Taako never expected them to. Still, he kissed her lips like a prayer, like she was so much more than a corpse. He kissed her lips like she was holy, like she wasn’t covered in his cum and sweat and dirt; he kissed her chastely, like he hadn’t defiled her moments ago. Because that’s what she deserved. She deserved to be revered, to have her hair gently combed and her skin bathed, and she deserved to rest in the earth. She deserved fucking roses planted on her body. She didn’t deserve whatever the hell Taako just did.

“Taako?”

The voice sent a jolt through his body; he rolled off Lup’s body as if electrocuted, heart careening against his ribs. He could barely see. Everything pitched and rolled around him at a dizzying pace.

There was a shape against the stars.

Taako peered up, barely registering what he was seeing. A formless, shifting dark shape gradually gathered over him, slowly turning red. Slowly coalescing. Slowly shifting into a humanoid, robed form. His heart skidded and thudded along his ribcage painfully; he had a vague idea that he should probably put his dick away, which he didn’t follow through on.

He didn’t want to be happy. He had no right to be happy. But something in his heart didn’t pay any attention to the guilt, or the burgeoning need to explain himself, and it clicked back into place anyway.

(And that was the long and short of it, wasn’t it? He couldn’t help but feel complete again, no matter the circumstances. As long as she existed, Taako was himself.)

(And when she didn’t, Taako didn’t know who he was.)

When the form spoke again, her voice was heavy, not disappointed, but carrying so many emotions that it sounded like she was staggering under their weight.

“Oh, Taako,” Lup said, and despite everything, Taako laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> i would like to reiterate that, as usual, hate comments/messages cause me to write new gross fics at a 1:1 ratio. 1 fic per hate message. your choice.
> 
> thanks to everyone who's been so supportive of me getting back into fic after 7 years away, i love you all!!


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